Last night in London, Rowan Somerville won the Bad Sex in Fiction Award for his book, The Shape of Her. Every year, England’s Literary Review doles out the Bad Sex Award to a book with “poorly written, redundant or crude passages of a sexual nature.” Apparently, Somerville’s novel was also noteworthy for the sheer volume […]
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New works by Picasso discovered! Today! A retired French electrician and his wife claim to own 271 works by Picasso that have never been seen before, valued around $80 million, according to the Associated Press. The couple say Picasso gave them the lithographs, portraits, watercolors, collages and sketches. The works are believed to be authentic, […]
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Dave Hogan/Getty Images Salman Rushdie and, left to right, former wife Elizabeth West, son Milan Rushdie, and son Zafar Rushdie. LUKA AND THE FIRE OF LIFE By Salman Rushdie. Random House, 218 pp., $25. Story by Maggie Galehouse As one son was arriving in the world, another was coming of age. “My two boys are […]
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Apparently, the tryptophan is still coursing through my body. This is NOT a day for reading. Who can read when their eyes keep sliding shut? But it just might be a day for zombie love songs. That’s about all my brain can commit to. Michael P. Spradlin’s new book, Every Zombie Eats Somebody Sometime, takes […]
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Every year around the holidays, I create a list of the best books of the year — books people might want to buy and give as gifts. It’s a fun task, but it also makes me anxious. Most of us have very little time to read, so the last thing I want to do is […]
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Ken Ellis/Chronicle Illustration AN OBJECT OF BEAUTY By Steve Martin. Grand Central Publishing, 304 pages, $26.99. Reviewed by Thomas J. Walsh During his stand-up days, comedian-actor-author Steve Martin once riffed that “some people have a way with words, and other people … oh, not have way.” Martin has always had an elastic mastery over language, […]
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COMPASS ROSE By John Casey. Alfred A. Knopf, 384 pp., $27.95. Reviewed by Jenny Dial The characters in John Casey’s new novel, Compass Rose, live in South County. In this small Rhode Island community, characters’ lives are intertwined because of a girl named Rose. Rose’s father, Dick, was unfaithful to his wife, May, with Elsie […]
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